AUSTIN -- Public school district employees would have more protections under state law for reporting wrongdoing.

The Texas Education Agency would have expanded powers to subpoena records and testimony from witnesses.

School board trustees would join the list of elected officials who could be removed from office for dereliction of duty.

Manipulating and falsely reporting data to the Texas Education Agency could lead to a sentence of up to 10 years in prison under state law.

And the El Paso Independent School District would be required to create a program that lasts at least two years to recover students who were cheated out of a proper education because of a scheme by former Superintendent Lorenzo García and his accomplices that bolstered accountability ratings at the expense of students.

Those are the changes proposed in five bills filed Monday by state Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso. The measures still have a long way to go before becoming law, but Rodríguez said he hopes they provide a clear message that such disregard for students will not be tolerated.

"They are a response to a very serious problem that occurred in our school district that deprived students of an opportunity for an education," Rodríguez said. "It resulted in a tremendous loss of confidence and respect by the community, parents, other educators and elected officials in the governance of our school district."

Rodríguez and state Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, joined other lawmakers in filing more than 250 bills on Monday -- the first day for lawmakers to begin submitting legislation in anticipation of the 83rd legislative session.

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The session begins Jan. 8.

Bills filed by lawmakers throughout the state included a renewed call for the legalization of casino gambling, another attempt to ban texting while driving and a measure that would keep school boards from prohibiting the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

Most of the lawmakers who make up El Paso's delegation in Austin said Monday that they are still crafting bills that will include measures such as greater governmental transparency, securing research buildings for the University of Texas at El Paso and Texas Tech's Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, and making sure UTEP is not snubbed again after qualifying but being denied access to a small list of universities slated to tap into a pot of about $93 million over two years.

One of the main priorities for the delegation will be passing legislation that allows Texas Tech's Health Sciences Center at El Paso to become a stand-alone institution. That means the health sciences center would become an independent institution of the Texas Tech system with its own president instead of being a regional campus of Texas Tech's Health Sciences Center in Lubbock.

Rodríguez filed the legislation Monday.

"When we started to talk about establishing our first medical school in El Paso, we always talked about it in terms of it eventually being a separate stand-alone institution that would have more autonomy, and this is what exactly would occur under this bill," he said about conversations with other El Paso leaders.

EPISD legislation

But Rodríguez said he also wants to make sure that El Paso never again endures the pains of the cheating scheme that pushed some students out of EPISD schools, stopped others from enrolling and manipulated grade levels to keep students from taking the test that counts toward federal accountability. García, the former superintendent, is serving 3å years in prison for charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud for the cheating scheme and for steering a $450,000 no-bid contract to his mistress.

Two bills focus on the failure to catch the cheating scheme and to act decisively to correct the wrongdoing and punish those responsible.

Rodríguez added board trustees to a list of elected officials who can be removed from office under state law. Some in the community have criticized the board's failure to catch the cheating and oversee the internal auditor who found evidence of grade and grade level manipulations at Bowie High School. School Board President Isela Castañon-Williams could not be reached for comment.

The state senator is also trying to expand the subpoena authority of the Texas Education Agency after former Education Commissioner Robert Scott claimed that the state agency's failure to catch the cheating scheme in 2010 could be attributed to limited power to subpoena records and testimony from witnesses.

Legislation filed by Rodríguez would grant subpoena authority to investigate "a complaint submitted to the agency with respect to inaccurate data that is reported" by school districts to the state for purposes relating to school accountability and accreditation.

Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the TEA, said the state agency can't lobby or ask lawmakers to carry legislation "but obviously this has been a pretty public discussion and the issue about subpoena powers has come up before."

Another measure would make reporting fraudulent data to the TEA a third-degree felony, punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

Rodríguez also filed a bill that strengthens whistle-blower protections for employees who report wrongdoing to law enforcement and other officials. The bill states that employees can also be protected from retaliation if they report wrongdoing to a supervisor, an administrator or a human resources staff member. One provision in the bill says that an employee who feels they have suffered from retaliation can file a lawsuit against the school district without going through the standard grievance process.

"If you're going to send a strong message that this conduct is not going to be tolerated, then you make the legislation as strong as possible to let people know that if you engage in this conduct, you can get sued and it will cost you money," Rodríguez said.

EPISD Trustee Rocio Benedicto, in an email late Monday night, said she was disappointed that Rodríguez had not made more of an effort to work with the district on "more substantive legislative proposals to strengthen accountability."

Benedicto said that while the whistle-blower bill may be well-intentioned, it could have the unintended consequence "of making it more difficult for school districts to fire employees who should be held accountable for misconduct," though she did not elaborate in her statement. She also suggested that increased penalties should extend to others who hurt children not just those who send fraudulent data to the TEA.

"In addition to making it a state felony to manipulate data to TEA, what about penalties for others who knowingly engage in other types of wrongdoing that harm students?" Benedicto wrote.

Interim Superintendent Vernon Butler declined an interview with the El Paso Times but provided a statement about the bills related to the EPISD, which included a measure that would require the school district to create a special student recovery program that would identify students affected by the cheating scheme, offer remedial instruction and provide them with an opportunity to earn a high school diploma or GED. Students up to 26 years old would be given the opportunity to return to school and earn a high school diploma.

"I haven't had the opportunity to review Sen. Rodríguez's legislation to respond to any specific details, but the District's Alpha Initiative has been actively working to recover students who were unfairly denied an education," Butler said in the statement. "There is currently no age limitation, and students are offered remedial classes, alternative graduation, and other resources to help them complete their education. These recovery efforts will require a long term commitment by EPISD, but as the Interim Superintendent, I'm working with District staff to ensure that they're doing everything possible to recover all students."

Rodríguez's bill states that the program will continue at least two years but may carry on until the state education commissioner determines it is no longer necessary. Still, the program could not be ended without the state agency first holding a public hearing in El Paso to see if the community still feels there is a need for the program.

Rodríguez said he gave the education commissioner flexibility in the bill and hopes that the TEA would establish procedures that require the school district to report back to the state agency.

Veterans, transportation

Legislation filed by Pickett on Monday would focus on the spouses and dependents of military veterans and ending the diversions of transportation dollars to pay for other programs.

Pickett submitted three bills, including a measure that allows the surviving spouses of military veterans who were 100 percent disabled to receive tax exemptions on their homes if their spouse was collecting the exemption but died before the law changed to extend the benefit to surviving spouses.

Pickett also filed a bill that would remove the statutory maximum age allowed for children and other dependents of veterans to receive some tuition and fee exemptions at colleges and universities. Currently, military dependents cannot qualify for certain state exemptions if they are older than 25 years old.

Another of Pickett's bills would seek to end diversions of state highway dollars to other programs by phasing them out as additional revenue becomes available. More than $1 billion from the state's highway fund pays for policing operations at the Department of Public Safety instead of road maintenance and construction.

"In transportation, people have been siphoning the money off for years and they don't get general revenue, so I think we should start putting it back," Pickett said.

Zahira Torres may be reached at ztorres@elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.